After many years as a scientist (immunology) at Oxford University I moved into scientific journalism and public understanding of science.
I am still at Oxford Uni but now I write about any bio... Read More »

Vaccines are the safest, cheapest and most effective way
to protect against infectious diseases but to make a good one remains a
challenge, and traditional approaches are now stretched to the limit while
fatal diseases, like HIV and malaria, remain without vaccine. But a major breakthrough that turns vaccine design on its head has now been published in Nature on the 6th of February - a new computational method that, from the protective antibodies of patients, can design the vaccine specific to induce them (and protect against the disease).

The desert locust (a type of grasshopper), much like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, goes from being an innocuous solitary-living individual to become a voracious gregarious animal that destroys everything on its path (and back).

A week ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered to massive media coverage an unsettling message – climate change is real, humans are the main cause of it, and unless we stop the warming of the planet, in 50 years life as we know will be no more. The problem now, is that despite in numerous attempts, world consensus on how to do it has proved impossible.

Research in Nature Climate Change by
a Portuguese team known worldwide for their studies on cooperation claims to have not only identified the root of the problem but also its solution.

A stressful pregnancy might be the last thing a future mother needs, but it is to her unborn baby that this stress spells real trouble. All because stress hormones (called glucocorticoids or GCs) can disrupt foetal brain development, leading to serious behavioural and emotional problems, much in the same way that traumas early in life can result in children with serious mental problems.

New research just out in the
journal Science Translational Medicine opens
the door for treatments capable of stopping Alzheimer’s
disease (AD) before its first symptoms, that is to say before crucial
damage occurs. In fact, while AD is a devastating disorder, it is also an extremely
slow one; it takes more than 10 years for the first symptoms to appear making
this preclinical period (pre-symptoms) the ideal time to intervene.

We all know about
people’s personalities, and anyone with a dog or a cat will also tell you about
their temperaments. More surprising, though, is how many others, from octopuses
to frogs and even spiders have them. So why behave according to a personality,
when flexibility could allow smarter choices?